13 broken pencils: Birthday Letter 2024

Hi Mama, Baba,

It feels like an eon has passed since I last sat down to write you.

Maybe because so much has happened around me. Maybe so much has happened within me.

Most probably, it's both.

It's been such a horrible year in so many ways. Palestine is bleeding more than I've ever had to witness. The South too. And with its wounds so many questions and so many introspective pauses and silences that have made me question things in ways I never imagined I would have to. Life has also paved paths in ways that have led me to inevitably identify parallels between the course of my life and yours that almost feels too much of a coincidence to be one. It almost feels like I'm in an odd art haus version of The Truman Show and I'm barrelling towards some third act in a film that leaves its viewer in a bit a of haze, wanting a cigarette and a long walk to deal with more questions than answers.

Sorry. I'm rambling. Let me try again.

This is how it feels in my brain these days. So much going on that I am left a bit numb and unable to untangle and find my way. Split screen?

At a time when I would benefit the most from your guidance, this cruel irony of my life is not having you around. Having to materialise you in my mind, exerting so much energy on retracing your faces, the little extra lines that are unique to you, finding the right timbre of your voices, straining to hear them, following your motions as you move in my mind's eye. All that energy when really all I need is you here. Wouldn't that have been simpler for us all?

Instead I am faced with big questions about who I am in this world, what is my place (or rather, what did I perceive my place to be, and what it is in actuality... ) my identity as an Arab, as Lebanese, as a human, a mother, an immigrant, a third culture kid....

Who am I?

Scratch that. I know who I am.

I'm all those things, and your daughter. And you are the compass by which I direct myself.

The question I've faced these past 9 months is not "Who am I?" but "what does it mean to be who I am?"

And how do I hold on to who I am, and pass it on to my children... And what does who I am mean to the people that I share this world in? Increasingly I've realised that it doesn't matter that I am the person that has gone through all the experiences and milestones and education....

The difference between life and death for me and someone that shares my heritage and culture, is purely location. Purely chance.

And having children... The perspective it gives, the layers it adds to the way you see things, and value things, and access priorities.

What does it mean for Laith and Zayn to be half Arab? Is it a hindrance? Why should it be? It should be a medal of honour... They should raise their head proud and not fear any consequence, or discrimination, or label...

Suddenly identity and belonging has become something that is no longer in the background like it was for me growing up. It is at the forefront, and needing all the power I can muster to defend it, for my sake, and the boys. In a world where being Arab automatically diminishes the value of your existence, I need to fight to make sure we are not a number. And that is tiring. So tiring.

I now understand the deep hole all the injustice the Lebanese and Palestinians endured drove you into Mama. You being the sensitive, transparent soul you are. Always reeling against injustice and cruelty.

And being here in Cyprus, how do I "be" who I am, while also having to exist in a world that feels like a bubble. Not sharing so much of who I am, having to stifle my pain, these worries, these existential questions... A double life. And that is tiring. So tiring.

Mama, there are things now that never clicked into place as much as they do now. Your frustration with me when I made mistakes speaking Arabic, misgendering objects, or mispronouncing. I now hear you in my voice when I am infuriated with Laith for saying something wrong in Arabic, especially when he never did before. I have turned into you. I see flashbacks of your face when I tripped up and it mirrors in mine looking at Laith, with a few differences here and there.

I listen to Fairuz in the mornings. My heart is now dipped in our heritage and our culture and I wear it on my sleeve. I gravitate towards the things that I never did when I lived in the homeland.

Truly, something shifts when you are "expelled".

How much I understand you now, how you were back then, a new mother, in a foreign place, desperately holding on to there, while being here/there/Lebanon.

The indignation of having to have left in the first place. Then because of war, and now, because of everything that came after it.

Baba, now it's been what, 17 years. So much happened in our Lebanon. And we fought for it. Mama, and I. We did. To a point that it became second nature, till I thought this was "everywhere", the struggle was for everyone. (how silly?) and then it nearly hurt Laith. And I couldn't anymore.

Wouldn't.

And when I was no longer in that place with that fight, I realised the people around me did not have to have that struggle. Did not have to fight. Or at least not the way we did.

And suddenly it felt a lot lonelier. And a lot more alien.

And my world shrunk.

To have suddenly found yourself, only to not be able to fully be the self that you found.

So that's where I am now. Where you were then. With some differences in scenery, and in some opinions, and in some tastes.

I'm truly and completely "homesick".

Home is you and home is there, and home is a time when all felt better.

And it's hard. I find it hard. I have to admit it to myself and remind myself.

Because if I don't I can't explain how weary I am.

It feels the loss never stops. Loss of you, loss of home, loss of the familiar, loss of self.

And more and more, as time passes, I lose parts of you both (mama... hug Khalto for me...)

This is the first time I have been able to sit and be present with a photo of you both. I had to stop and soak it in. Life keeps pulling at me, the boys pull at me, the race of keeping up with the world pulls at me.

And it's nice. It's nice to sit with you even for a solid minute, in the quiet, looking at pixels of light that form faces that I wish I could hold and kiss and have smile back at me. Even if it makes me cry.

Laith turned 6 and all I could think about was "He's been alive as many years without you Mama as he has with you... "

It's all I could think about and I hated it. I pushed the calculation away every chance I had but it was always there. And next year I can already hear my voice in my head say "He's been alive without her, longer than he has with her... ", and every year that spot you are standing on in the timeline of his life will get further and further and the pain of being on the ever moving wave with him looking back at you is just going to be there. Forever.

And you Baba, are so far behind her, that you are no longer a reference for time now... You are now stood firmly still in the faraway "over there". But still there. Never gone.

Never.

It just really never does get easier, does it.

Don't answer that. It's not a question anymore. Just a reminder.

So it's been a hard year. Can you tell?

I'm grateful you both aren't here for it. Mama.. I don't know what you would have done.

It's the little mercy of you not witnessing it that soothes me in the slightest way...

But it will have to get better. It must, it will.

And it's not all horror. There are joys.

In the boys, in seeing them grow. Watching their brains expand. In looking forward to planting within them more and more parts of you that I have in me.

I just need to be less tired.

Yalla. It will come.

You are always with me, even when I don't stop and pause to look. But I feel you.

And I will uphold the promise I always make. To be the best I can at being human, and being honest, and being true to you, and what you represented, all the beautiful things.

I promise to keep you with me, all the time, and to bring you to those you love when I can.

So they can still see you in a movement I make, or a sound I speak, and in Laith and Zayn, so they can forever say things like "He looks like his Teta", "He reminds me of Mohamad".

Sometimes they don't even have to say it.

I hear it in the way they look tenderly, and caress a hair away from a face, or smile at the innocence of children that hold within them so much treasures from people that were treasures themselves.

How can you escape that? You can't. And thank goodness for that.

I don't know if I said it enough, or said it at all, at least this clearly, but I am forever grateful I am your daughter.

I am so proud of you both, and I am proud to have you as my Mama and Baba.

And I will forever hold close all that you taught me is valuable.

Honesty, integrity, humility... humanity.

Happy birthday Baba. B7ibbak dayman ou 3ala tool.

Mama, ishta2tillik aktar ma kinti fiki titkhayali.

La ekhir nafas.

I love you, I love you, I love you.

We love you.

Bintkon Karma

ou a7fedkon, Laith ou Zayn.